Fantagraphics Blog Blog

{mosimage}Jessica Abel (Chicago, 1969) started making comics in college, at the University of Chicago. Her early efforts appeared in the student anthology Breakdown. After college, in 1992, she won the infamous “Stinky Date” contest in Peter Bagge’s Hate comics, and, since she had arranged to meet the artist at the Chicago Comics Convention, she decided to put together a sampler of her comics to show him and his publisher, Fantagraphics. She printed 50 copies of Artbabe #1, but Fantagraphics editor Gary Groth, who claims not to remember this encounter, didn’t take the bait. Four issues (and four years) later, she…

I’ve been putting together Peter Bagge‘s next Hate Annual (#7) which contains ten pages of his Weekly World News “Bat Boy” strips. The strips are some of my favorite work from Pete and I was curious about how he came to do a comic strip for the notoriously bizarre supermarket tabloid. So for the fans here’s some quick Q&A: {mosimage} JC: With Weekly World News now out of business is there any chance of more Bat Boy stories? It’s fun to see the anthropomorphic side of your work. Your style lends itself so strongly to that world. PB: There’s no…

{mosimage} Fantagraphics Books is celebrating national Classic Comic Strip Month in November with a 20% discount on all strip reprint titles. Now is the time to explore the delightful works of timeless artists like Winsor McCay (Little Nemo in Slumberland), E. C Segar (Popeye), Hank Ketcham (Dennis the Menace), George Herriman (Krazy Kat), and the incomparable Charles M. Schulz (Peanuts), among countless others. Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery in Seattle will feature these and other titles all month long at 20% off our already bargain prices. Look for similar promotions at your local shop and pick up a copy of the…

It’s Steve Ditko’s 80th birthday today, and we’d like to take the opportunity to make the following announcement: COMING IN JUNE 2008… STRANGE & STRANGER: THE WORLD OF STEVE DITKO {mosimage} Fantagraphics Books is proud to announce the June 2008 release of the first critical retrospective of Steve Ditko, the co-creator and original artist of the Amazing Spider-Man. In the wake of the astonishing success of Sam Raimi’s three Spider-Man movies, Steve Ditko’s status as a driving force behind the pop culture icon has been revealed to an audience the world over. But, in the context of Steve Ditko’s 50-year…

{mosimage} We are truly living in a Golden Age of classic comics strip collections, and as such we’re collaborating with CHECKER PUBLISHING (Flash Gordon, Little Nemo, Steve Canyon), DRAWN AND QUARTERLY (Moomin, Oh Skin-nay!, Walt and Skeezix), and IDW (Dick Tracy, Terry and the Pirates) to produce a cool, oversized promotional sampler that will be available in participating comic shops throughout November 2007 (while supplies last). This full-color 11" x 17" tabloid is a spectacular showcase of some of the finest comics art of the last century and a collector’s item in the making! Designed like an old-time classic newspaper…

{product_snapshot:id=688,true,false,true,left}The Before Columbus Foundation have announced the Winners of the Twenty-Seventh Annual AMERICAN BOOK AWARDS. Brooklyn-based Cartoonist Gary Panter was named a recipient for his 2006 graphic novel, Jimbo’s Inferno, published by Seattle’s Fantagraphics Books. Panter becomes the second Fantagraphics-published author to garner an ABA — Joe Sacco’s Palestine was a recipient in 1996, and the award at that time very much helped solidfy Palestine‘s place in the pantheon of great graphic novels. Jimbo’s Inferno is the acclaimed sequel (or prequel, as it was actually completed first) to 2004’s acclaimed Jimbo in Purgatory. Jimbo is the muscular, buzz-cut adventurer whom…

Joe Sacco discussed Palestine: The Special Edition and his other works in a fascinating talk at the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery on October 27, 2007. Hear Joe’s entire half-hour discussion by downloading this 20 MB MP3 or streaming it here: {audio}mp3/2007-10-27_Sacco.mp3{/audio} (Pardon the low-fi quality; the tape recorder had a few glitches and speed issues, and I think some of the quieter moments might have been dropped, but I tried to correct what problems I could and de-chipmunk it as much as possible.) Here are a few brief video excerpts: Joe answers a question from Larry Reid and defines his…

From our friends at Coconino comes news once again of an honor going to Francesca Ghermandi. Enjoy this horribly mangled Babelfish translation: “Francesca Ghermandi has gained the Ciampi Prize Altrarte 2007. One will be kept its extension to the Blue Gallery Camel of Livorno, with inauguration 27 October 2007 to the 21:00. The extension will expose a part of the 250 designs in.bianco and black of small and formed mean it realizes to you to biro for ‘a summer to Tombstone’, mostra/libro between the last plans capacities to fulfillment from the Ghermandi.” The Ciampi “L’Altrarte” Prize is apparently named in…

{product_snapshot:id=741,false,false,false,right}Five women stand in a police lineup on the cover of Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez’s Love and Rockets #1; four of them are garishly dressed, impressively endowed superwomen — perfectly normal, because this is, after all, a comic book. A closer look, however, reveals a fifth woman who seems thoroughly out of place — mousy, in bathrobe and curlers, smoking a cigarette, she appears to have been suddenly yanked from her breakfast table. Surely, this diminutive, dowdy woman is here by mistake — or is she? That image might have seemed not only a contradiction but downright subversive in a…